Homelessness Could Rise 45% In One Year Due To Unemployment Crisis
'Homelessness Could Rise 45 Percent In One Year Due To Unemployment Crisis,' Igor Derysh, Truthout/Salon, 5/23/20.
The rash of layoffs sparked by the coronavirus pandemic and statewide lockdowns are expected to increase homelessness by up to 45%, according to a new analysis by an economist at Columbia University.
The analysis estimates that about 250,000 people could be left homeless as a result of skyrocketing unemployment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that there were 568,000 homeless people in the country in January, before the outbreak.
Dr. Brendan O’Flaherty, a professor of economics who has studied homelessness for decades and conducted the analysis, said the projected rise would be “unprecedented.”
“No one living has seen an increase of 10% of unemployment in a month,” he said.
- Rectangles are painted on the ground to encourage homeless people to keep social distancing at a city-sanctioned encampment across from City Hall in San Francisco, CA on May 22, 2020, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
O’Flaherty’s model relied on homelessness data in an earlier study published by the Journal of Housing Economics in 2017, which found that every 1% increase to the unemployment rate corresponded with the homelessness rate rising by 0.65 per 10,000 people. The analysis used unemployment projections from the Economic Policy Institute, which predicted a 15.6% rate by July, and the Congressional Budget Office, which similarly projected a 16% unemployment rate by the summer.
“If the projections of unemployment being made now turn out to be accurate, and the relationship between unemployment and homelessness follows the historical pattern, and no other major changes occur, that’s what we can expect to happen,” O’Flaherty said.
But the unemployment rate could be far worse than those projections predict. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April, a level unseen since the Great Depression. That number hardly tells the whole story, as another 2.4 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims this week — suggesting that the economic shock caused by the virus is far from over.
More than 38 million people have now filed for unemployment since the lockdowns began in March, representing nearly a quarter of the nation’s entire workforce.
In California, which already has the largest homeless population in the United States, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state projects the unemployment rate to hit 24.5% this year...
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